Monday, September 9, 2013

President Obama’s Most Extreme Nominee?!?

President Obama has nominated to the DC Circuit arguable
his most extreme judicial nominee yet, Professor Cornelia Pillard.A quick example of this is her views on
social issues.As legal expert Ed Whelan
describes:

In a single sentence,
Pillard contends that for “sex education conservatives” (i.e., supporters of
abstinence-only sex education), “[1] females’ chastity is more important than
males’; … [2] marriage is the only proper venue for sexual intimacy; [and] [3]
men’s sex drive and sexual satisfaction is privileged while women’s is demonized
[!] or ignored” (p. 953). But the second proposition contradicts or undercuts
the other two. If abstinence-only advocates regard marriage as the “only proper
venue for sexual intimacy,” it is difficult to see how they regard male
chastity as less important than female chastity. In the free-for-all sexual
culture in which we live, it is at most a very limited “privilege” for a man’s
“sexual satisfaction” to be reserved to marriage. And if Pillard has any
evidence that even remotely supports her assertion that women’s “sex drive and
sexual satisfaction … [are] demonized” by abstinence-only curricula, I missed
it.

You don’t have to take the word of a legal expert like
Whelan, the entire Supreme Court
including its most liberal Justices have
rejected Pillard’s views.

[In the] case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v.
EEOC. Among other things, Pillard (according to her prepared text) said
that the case “strikes [her] as a strong case for the employee” and that “the
big news will be if the Court decides it for the Church.” She labeled the
Lutheran Church’s position “a substantial threat to the American rule of law.”

As it turned out, of course,
on the fundamental question of religious liberty at stake in that case, the
Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the church entity. So that’s
further confirmation that Pillard is well to the left of all nine justices.

The thing is, virtually
everyone agrees that the D.C. Circuit — with the lowest number of appeals filed
annually — does not need more judges because it is already significantly
under-worked. According to legal expert Ed Whelan, the D.C. Circuit’s total
pending appeals dropped around 10% since 2005, falling from 1,463 to 1,315from
September 2005 to September 2012, while pending appeals per active judge
increased by only one case. The Circuit’s judges, including the contributions
of senior judges, now have around two-thirds the workload of their colleagues
in 1995-96.

Senate Democrats once agreed.
In 2006, every Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee member, including Sen.
Schumer and then-Sen. Joe Biden, wrote a letter opposing the nomination of
Peter Keisler because the court was underworked.

Ms. Pillard is a liberal extremist nominee to placate the
President’s far left base for a position that is not needed.